Posts Tagged ‘parliament’

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas arrived Sunday in Athens for a two-day official visit to Greece.

Abbas is set to meet with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday, Associated Press reported.

On Tuesday he is scheduled to address the Greek Parliament, where the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee unanimously called on the government to recognize the PA as an independent sovereign Arab nation.

This comes in the wake of a meeting between Tsipras and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that left both in good spirits. Tsipras, whose party has long been a supporter of the Palestinian Authority, also met with Abbas in Ramallah during that visit.

Turkey goes to the polls today (Sunday, Nov. 1) to choose its parliamentarians. The poll follows a June 7 election that turned the government upside down, removing the Islamist Justice and Development (AK) Party from a single-party majority.

A strong backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the rest of the AKP leadership forced the Nov. 1 election in an attempt to regain a parliament majority.

The November polls were called after the AKP failed to create a viable coalition government; ; President Erdogan refused to allow a different party to attempt to form a government instead.

Since June, the interim national unity caretaker government has negotiated two new agreements.

The first deal was reached with the European Union over measures to handle the growing Syrian refugee crisis in exchange for advancing negotiations over Turkey’s membership in the EU.

The second agreement was reached in mid-July with the United States over the use by USAF warplanes of Turkish air bases and air space while fighting Da’esh (ISIS) terrorists in Syria and Iraq.

The Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky hailed efforts by British members of parliament who have begun to fight the rising tide of anti-Semitism in their own country as well as the swelling tide elsewhere in Europe. Not all UK lawmakers share the views of their colleagues, making the effort far more difficult.

The recent report released by the UK’s Community Security Trust, which has reported figures for anti-Semitism in Britain annually since 1984 noted that in 2014 incidents against Jews more than doubled.

“I welcome the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism’s publication of its new report on anti-Jewish hatred, as well as the report’s important conclusions,” Sharansky stated. He pointed out that for many years it was the task of The Jewish Agency to publish reports on European anti-Semitism.

“The data in these reports was disputed and, at times, rejected in disbelief,” he added. “Recently, however, surveys and reports in France and the UK have started confirming information we released years ago. National governments and civil society now recognize the gravity of the situation.

“This recognition is an important step in the struggle against all manifestations of anti-Semitism – in the streets, on the internet, in the media, on university campuses, and in schools,” he said. “But it is not enough to deploy armed policemen and soldiers around synagogues and Jewish schools. The problem must be addressed at its very roots, through education, legal steps, and social action.

“The new anti-Semitism, which fuels many of the violent attacks against Jews, feeds on the delegitimization, demonization, and double standards applied to Israel. It becomes even more pronounced and vicious when Israel is forced to defend itself and protect its citizens.

“The hotbeds of incitement and the root causes of anti-Israel hatred must be dealt with in order to quell all forms of anti-Semitism and ensure that Jewish life may thrive in safety across Europe,” Sharansky said.

The British House of Commons passed a symbolic resolution backing creation of a Palestinian state and of a two state partiton solution on Monday.

The exact wording of the resolution was:

“That this House believes that the Government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel as a contribution to securing a negotiated two state solution.”

While the vote initiated by the parliament’s opposition party won with 274 to 12, only half the members of the British Parliament actually voted.

It is not yet clear if this has any implications other than acknowledging that a “Palestinian state” does not exist, and that the UK is way behind the curve if they still support a “two state solution”.

If the resolution had actually recognized a Palestinian state, as some mistakenly believe, then that would mean a two-state solution has already been implemented.

The British government is not bound to do anything as a result of the vote.

The only question left is this, will UK lawmakers back Islamic State next?

The President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, started a small riot in the Knesset Wednesday afternoon, when he rebuked the MKs on the lack of equality which, evidently, forces people to blow up their Jewish neighbors. Not a lot has changed in the Fatherland, it appears.

“There is no alternative to peace if we want to give people an honorable life,” Schultz said, adding, “The Palestinians, too, have the right to self determination and to justice. Tell me, and I ask you if this is right, that Israelis are allowed to use 17.5 gallons of water a day, while the Palestinians only 4.25 gallons.”

The paper details the water agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, refuting any criticism against Israel for not adhering to its commitments. “Israel has not only fulfilled all of its obligations stemming from the 1995 Interim Agreement signed with the PA,” writes Prof. Gvirtzman, “but has met all water commitments requisite of a permanent status agreement as well.”

The study documents the fact that “there is almost no difference today in the per capita consumption of natural water between Israelis and Palestinians. The large difference that existed in 1967, when the administration of Judea and Samaria was handed over from Jordan to Israel, has been reduced over the last 40 years and is now negligible. As well, the per capita domestic water consumption of the Palestinians is significantly higher than the minimum human needs defined by the World Health Organization.”

And here comes the point which the EU president should probably take back to his hosts in Ramallah, “While Israel has ensured that nearly all Palestinian villages and towns are connected to running water, the Palestinians have violated their part of the agreement by refusing to build sewage treatment plants (despite available international financing). Moreover, the Palestinians have drilled hundreds of unlicensed wells and set up unauthorized connections to Israeli water supply pipelines.”

Jewish Home MKs calling Schultz’s lie, moments before they stood up and left the plenum in disgust. Photo by Flash 90.

Many Jewish Home MKs reacted with appropriate rage, and Chairman Naftali Bennett, MK Orit Struk and a few others yelled: “It’s a lie!”

Jewish Home MK Motti Yogev yelled at Schultz something about the fact that Eretz Israel was given to the nation of Israel, and was promptly removed from the plenum. He was followed by a few colleagues from his faction. MK Struk said: “When the president of the European Parliament spits on you, you can’t keep quiet, wipe your face and say it was the rain.”

Bennett wrote in his Facebook page a short while later: “I will not accept a lying sermon against the nation of Israel in the Israeli Knesset, certainly not in German.”

Naturally, the left condemned mightily the Jewish Home reaction, which, as Minister Uri Orbach put it, was a quiet protest. The same left kept mum only two weeks ago, when Arab MK Ahmad Tibbi screamed uncontrollably at Canadian PM Stephen Harper.

Prime Minister Netanyahu was critical of Schultz’s speech, suggesting it reflected the selective hearing which has become rampant in many European circles. He added that the figures Schultz had picked up in Ramallah about the water consumption gaps are simply wrong.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be visiting the U.S. next month, to meet with president Barack Obama.

In a meeting of the Likud Beitenu faction in the Knesset today, Netanyahu said his visit has four goals: continuing the political struggle to deny Iran a nuclear weapon; advancing the “peace process”; recruiting investors in Israel’s technology market; and encouraging tourism to Israel.

Netanyahu is expected to be a guest of honor at the AIPAC conference, to be held March 2-4 in Washington, DC.

Finance Minister Yair Lapid on Wednesday froze the money going to Haredi yeshivas, following a Tuesday Supreme Court ruling that ordered the state to halt all payments to yeshivas whose students’ draft has been postponed.

Lapid instructed the Finance Ministry’s comptroller to freeze the payments, but on Thursday he issued a statement saying that, after discovering that the funds had already been sent to the Education Ministry, he convened an emergency meeting with his comptroller following which he ordered her to block those funds as well.

Lapid’s statement said that this was done in an effort to obey the high court’s ruling.

Now the two offices will be cooperating to separate the 18- to 20-year-old yeshiva students with an August draft postponement, who will not be paid, from the rest of the yeshiva students.

“These will no longer receive state funds,” said the Lapid statement. “Only once the Education Ministry’s examination of their cases is concluded will the Finance Ministry release the funds to those yeshiva students not included in the court ruling.”

The Supreme Court ruled on several appeals from so called good government groups. The court ordered government to issue an updated announcement by March 31 regarding the pay, saying the justices might issue a new decision should the Knesset not come up with new legislation by then.

Meanwhile, the justices have prohibited government to transfer any funds “intended to support Torah institution students born in 1994, 95 and the first half of 96, who received their draft date starting in August, 2013, and who have not shown up to be drafted based on general decisions to postpone their draft made by the IDF Chief of Staff.”

So, everybody wins: Lapid gets to show his few remaining potential voters that he’s tough on parasitic Haredim; the Haredi yeshiva deans get to show the world that Israel hates Torah; and Yeshiva students and their families get a rare opportunity to drop their nasty habit of eating several times a day and living in homes.